The White Reindeer

Valkoinen Peura (The White Reindeer) was Finland’s entry in the 1953 Cannes Film Festival. Written, photographed and directed by Erik Blomberg, the film stars Blomberg’s wife Mirijami Kuosmanen. She plays a neglected young wife who responds to her husband’s coldness by venturing into the snowy wastes and transforming into a reindeer. Symbolically, every man who hunts this deer comes to a bad end. And then the husband goes a-hunting . . . . On paper, Valkoinen Peura seems ludicrous; on film, everything works beautifully. The film proved to be Finland’s first international postwar success.